We get a good sense of what the story will be like from the trailer and it stays close to the one in the manga, written by Mamoru Oshii. “The Major,” a cyborg, runs Section 9, an intelligence organization that fights cyber-criminals. According to the official synopsis, the group “is faced with an enemy whose singular goal is to wipe out Hanka Robotic’s advancements in cyber technology.”

There are a few departures from the source material. For one, “The Major” doesn’t seem to know who she is. In the manga and film, she is aware of her past and how she became a cyborg, and it adds something to the core of the narrative, which concerns humanity’s relationship with machines and the Major’s own questions about the state of her being (hence the title, which is a play on “the ghost in the machine”).

We also still don’t have answers as to why Scarlett Johansson was cast as the lead. She’s referred to here as “The Major” instead of Major Motoko Kusanagi as a way to get around any controversies surrounding whitewashing, but any practical reasons for not casting a Japanese actress are still unclear (besides the racism we’ve seen countless times in Hollywood, especially when it comes to actors of Asian descent). Producer Steven Paul told Buzzfeed that the plan was to create a more international story, but three other prominent characters have been replaced with white actors.

It doesn’t also help that in the trailer, most of the people who are gunned down or beaten up are played by Asian actors. Most of the characters with dialogue are played by white actors.

In a world where the voices of people of color are silenced all the time, it would’ve been worth it to see a Japanese story starring and being told by Japanese actors.

Things we can say in the trailer’s favor: it looks beautiful. It aesthetically stays very close to the 1995 anime film, including some scenes that look like they’ve been redone shot-for-shot. It has a lot in common with Blade Runner regarding design (and incidentally, Westworld, although that might not have been on purpose). It’s imagery that works, especially when we’re talking about a futuristic Tokyo that relies heavily on technology.